About Tank on Empty

During a road trip from Michigan to New York, the gas light went on and we wondered how far we could go before stopping. Since there wasn't a way to find out without calling AAA, we decided to let some internet collaboration help out. If enough people vote, we can get a better idea of how far you can go once your gas light goes on. With that in mind, don't use this info for anything other than entertainment...

After thinking this over, we realized there must be some great stories out there about people on car trips or just about their car in general. Why not have a place to share these stories with other people too? So if you've got a great story about a road trip, or a just an entertaining story about driving, share it with us and the community.

What do the numbers and graph mean?

Numbers

The numbers work like this: people respond to how far their car has gone by submitting their car make and model, and the maximum that their car has gone once the gas light has come on (note that they may not have run out of gas). Tank on Empty stores that number and when you click on your car, creates some statistics.

Data points

This number refers to how many people have submitted data for this car model. Higher numbers probably mean the other numbers are more accurate.

Average

The average adds up all "maximum miles" and divides by the number of data points. It roughly represents how far an "average" driver has gone.

Max

The biggest "maximum miles" entered. Note there is a limit of 99 -- after that I think you need to get your car checked out :-)

St. Dev

The standard deviation. This is a statistical term that shows how tightly packed the data is. If people are all submitting around the same number, a lower standard deviation will appear. If you're interested, read more here.

Graph

The graph for each model is called a histogram. It represents how everyone has voted like this:

Along the x-axis (from left to right) are the "maximum miles" and along the y-axis (top to bottom) are the number of data points for that "maximum miles".

If 3 people say that their Honda Civic goes 50 miles after the gas light, then the graph will show a bar with a height of 3 at the 50 position.